At last year’s Wordstock, it was impossible to feel alone in your book nerdiness. Every event was at capacity and the bigger ones had lines around the block. Credit: Kelsey Wroten

At last year’s Wordstock, it was impossible to feel alone in your book nerdiness. Every event was at capacity and the bigger ones had lines around the block.

At last year’s Wordstock, it was impossible to feel alone in your book nerdiness. Every event was at capacity and the bigger ones had lines around the block. Kelsey Wroten

Two years ago, Wordstock seemed to be on its last legs. Despite being one of the largest annual literary festivals in the country, the independent nonprofit that ran the local festival was having trouble maintaining its financial health and cultivating Portlanders’ excitement. So they called upon the staff at Literary Arts—the nonprofit behind programs like Portland Arts & Lectures, Writers in the Schools, and the Oregon Book Awards & Fellowships—to see if they wanted to take the reins.

While Literary Arts’ year-round programming reaches a wide spectrum of people, it didn’t have the citywide appeal a once-a-year festival can bring. “The idea of having this big civic moment for literature was very appealing to us,” says Literary Arts Executive Director Andrew Proctor. “[To have] programming for people who are five to people who are 105.”

Seeing it as an opportunity, Proctor and Co. looked to bigger literary festivals—in particular the Brooklyn Book Festival, the Miami Book Festival, and the L.A. Times Book Festival—examining what made them work. They found that each had partnered with a range of local organizations and took place in accessible public spaces.

Joshua James Amberson's work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and Tin House, among others. He's the author of the chapbook Everyday Mythologies on Two Plum Press, and he's currently...